A story of friendship and love in a high school setting. Sounds pretty much like a generic description of a lot of TV anime. So what makes Sakamichi no Apollon special?

Well, for one thing, the characters. They're real; often painfully so. They hurt, they do dumb things, they have passion, they're reaching for something beyond reach, something that they often have no idea what it is.

For another thing, the music, the 50s/60s jazz that inspired these characters. Yoko Kanno of Cowboy Bebop fame headed up the music production, and sometimes during the show I wondered how much of her own experience mirrored that of the characters, given her fluency in the jazz idiom. I bet she too played Art Blakey's "Moanin'" in high school and thought "You know, I can do this!"